Haggerston bridge

London Plane, trunk like old skin, lamp clad and bluing

Is portal guard like Cerebus to dark water in warm dusk

This is not the Styx, this yoked conduit of memory

Slow freight path of archaeology

Is again thinking new sediment.

Where once were dreams rise modular units

Poorly edited, I remember this manuscript

When the blocks of type had no roofs

Shards and boards, pigeons and purple budlea.

The new brick is unetched by traffic

Unwashed by soot, standing as if

It is something, the red faced facade

And underneath steel webbed core.

There is no thought of empire here no more

Thoughts are elsewhere, interest and consideration

Elsewhere, decorations, elsewhere

Stucco and arches, long ago squared

No proud punctuation of co-operative endeavor,

No ornamentation

Just railings, iron, 4x10 or whatever.

This manuscript is seen from distance

Where pride is in different things

Different interest and considerations

Whoever made this wash

Does not know this place

And what it has to be proud of.

Dusk stretches into lost distance like this

Dark artery, spun into glasses, footsteps, kisses

By a million lights, it is hard to know

When the sun sets.

But there is no thought of empire

Where innovation is a different shape of box

Frosted glass steps monotonous, myopic space

They believe in these cube units.

Cubists,

But value just one angle

There is no thought of empire here

Only conquest.